The Evolution of Twitter and Me

Common wisdom has it that Twitter growth is sliding. Maybe. But, in some unexpected ways, I find myself more attached to Twitter than ever.

You see, my use of Twitter has evolved from promotional outreach to community reach. Here's what I mean:

1. I really don't want to build a huge Twitter list. I want a select list and I'm fanatical about dividing my Twitter followers (from all three accounts) into specific categories. Admittedly, sometimes I'm not sure why I do this so religiously. I do have a feeling that some day I'll be glad I did; maybe it's the database marketer in me.

2. Twitter is a community. For instance, I can't watch the nightly news without turning on the Twitter account where my progressive friends hang out. I not only learn a great deal about what's going on, I can exchange thoughts with like-minded friends.

3. Twitter is a secondary key news source. If anything significant (or even of personal interest to me) happens nationwide or globally, I follow the hashtag. That's where I get the most current news and the opinion.

4 Generally speaking, hashtags are a vital search method for me -- less commonly used, perhaps, but equal to Google. Likewise, I don't tweet without hashtags.

5 Twitter is my search engine of choice for matters close to my heart: politics, marketing, writing, etc. Here's where the experts I know and respect hang out.

So, yes. I've noticed some key differences in my Twitter use lately. Anyone else?

-- scrubbed by MarketingBrillo

In a Flourish of Solopreneurship, This Artist Uses Social Media to Sell Direct

Dora Woodrum's Twitter introduction says, "Hello! My name is Dora. I am a contemporary abstract artist from Cleveland, Ohio. I paint original abstract and contemporary paintings, landscapes, and much more. to view my painting please take a look at my website: nicemodernart.com."

I don't know Dora personally. I do know that, according to Twitter, she has 31,092 followers, but follows only 7,646. Granted, automated progams like TwitterListBuilder or TweetBuilder can put anybody's count through the roof, but, in my observation, that particular Twit game generally ends up with equal parts follower and following. So, Dora would appear to be playing the social media game rather well.

She also has a Facebook page: Dora Woodrum Art. There you'll find photos and evidence of the 1,354 "likes" her page has garnered. So, yes, somebody has been efficiently building this gal's online presence.

Meanwhile, her LinkedIn profile notes that 11 of her paintings will be seen in Hello, I Must Be Going, a Sundance film festival pick scheduled to be released in theaters September 7, 2012. Impressive!

Maybe selling art on Twitter works for Dora Woodrum and maybe it doesn't. Online art and craft sales have worked for Etsy's 800,000 storekeepers since 2005, so why shouldn't creatives of all ilk go directly to the source of buyers? Certainly, Dora Woodrum appears successful and -- for certain -- her follow persuaded me to both follow-back and check out her website. And write this blog.

In short, thanks Dora, for showing others that solopreneurs with products to sell can tweak the social media model to work for them.

--Scrubbed by MarketingBrillo

Auto Communicate with Social Media “Friends”? Uh-huh.

Flowtown can automate your social media contacts. As the YouTube video demonstrates, all you have to do is import your email contact data into Flowtown and then you can email everybody with whom you’re also connected on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr. The process is automatic and en masse.

At $17/month plus 4.5 ¢ per import, it’s not cheap. In fact, for an entrepreneur who works on a selective basis with other businesses, that’s a deal breaker.

Others disagree. Email marketing software developer Mail Chimp lauds Flowtown in Ben Chestnut's blog. Could be that Chestnut is onto something. He's clearly no dummy, which is apparent from the excellent pricing of MailChimp. Hurray. If you’re managing up to 500 names, you can use MailChimp for free. Now that's a good one. I signed up.

In the process of blogging today, I realized I don't feel good about automating messages to people with whom I’ve “connected.” All my social media folks are real people. I totally get sending them an enewsletter or an evite or something that everybody recognizes as mass produced. But how can I pretend to be “social” en masse? In fact, I can see that backfiring, BIG time.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Today's NEW Marketing Report (For Today Only)

Saturday's email and Twit-fodder spotlighted trends in today's marketing ("today" being April 17; this will all change tomorrow).

1. We've gone to the movies.. the SHORT movies. Meet the irresistible Loic Le Meur and his report of YouTube mastery. Loic describes himself as a "French entrepreneur who lives in San Francisco, and is founder of Seemic and LeWeb conference." Loic told Twitter followers that he's posting a new YouTube daily, getting 3,000 hits a day, and has logged 1.7 million views. I believe it. This guy rocks (today). See a sample here.

2. Coupons Are Selling Us Out. Comrade Gabe Goldberg linked to a New York Times article that reported on information-gathering (some might say "spying") capabilities of online coupon vendors. If you're inclined to paranoia, don't read this -- especially the part that says barcodes on some of these coupons have the user's Facebook information embedded. (Does that include the office party photos? Ooops.)

3. Banks Want To Talk To Us. Well, they don't really want to talk to us; they want to "connect" with us online. (No, not in line; they don't want to talk to us at all in line. Online. Get it?) The Marketing Vox reports that banks are turning to social media to make "real, live" connections with customers. The horse left through the barn door long ago on that one, guys, but ... Bank of America's is reportedly using "many different strategies" to build -- or rebuild -- conversations with customers. (I suggest checking in with Frank Eliason, who's tweeting as "comcastcares" to see how that's working out.)

4. Social Media Friends Aren't All That. Writing on SmartBlog, Jesse Stanchak reports on Edleman's 2010 survey that says peers trust one another 20% less than they did in 2008. Edelman blames the recession, but Stanchak says social media may have redefined whom we consider peers, to wit: "The challenge is clear: We have a long way to go in understanding how relationships are formed, what they’re based on and how influence spreads. For now, we only know that consumers are becoming more discerning." (And just when we thought it was safe to go on Twitter...)

Speaking of social media gone bad, could "live, present, and in person" be the hot new secret marketing weapon? You heard it here first. And that's enough shocking news for one day.

--scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Social Media Was "the Kool-aid of 2009." In 2010, Marketers Will Tweak the Recipe.

The Washington, D.C.-area Ad-Marketing listserv managed by Mitch Arnowitz (@mitcharno) has been engaged in a lively exchange addressing whether or not the Netpreneur listserv should hop to another more "modern" venue, like LinkedIn.

The conversation led to various viewpoints of what "social media" is, how long SocMed has been around, and whether or not LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. meet today's needs better than older social networks like the listserv, launched in 1986. Ultimately, long time Netpreneur Dirk Johnson dubbed social media hype "the Koolaid of 2009." Dirk is on to something and here's why.

The Urban Dictionary defines "drink the Kool-aid" as follows: "To completely buy into an idea or system, whether good or bad" and/or "to go along with what a crowd desires." The term connotes being lured by the apparent sweetness of an idea, without attention to its more serious undertone.

Colorful language perhaps, but the characterization of Social Media as "the Kool-Aid of 2009" rings true for five reasons.

1. Social Media was a buzz term; the bigger the buzz, the more dramatic the silence. 2009 was the year everybody heard the chatter. Along with "social media" as the buzz du jour, a certain level of accompanying hysteria predicted outcomes for those who declined to "adopt it" or, worse, "do it wrong." Blog after blogster, expert after expert warned folks engaged in marketing to jump on the SocMed bandwagon and ride. The buzz worked. Today, a Google search for the precise term "social media" returns over 33 million results, along with the predictable response, "So what?"

2. Charlatans invaded the realm. 2009 also spawned the explosion of the so-called "social media consultant" -- folks who claimed expertise in "social media" and promised to help the uninitiated establish an effective Internet presence, particularly on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs. Back in September 2008, writing on ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick posed the question, "Is social media nothing but snake oil?" In that blog, Kirkpatrick cited seven people as the real-deal in social media consulting (Note: All remain stand-outs in the social media landscape). Dawn Foster, who was cited as one of Kirkpatrick's seven, observed in February 2009 "social media consultants popping up like dandelions." Today a Google search turns up close to two million entries for the exact term "social media consultants."

3. The term "social media" increasingly defies definition. Research by Danah Boyd at the School of Information, University of California-Berkeley defines social network sites as "web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system." Boyd notes that the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997 with SixDegrees.com. Today, Boyd refers to "the existence of "hundreds of social network sites (SNS)." Clearly, there is no such "thing" as social media.

4. Having a "presence on social media" was meaningless. RJMetrics reported 75 million Twitter accounts at the end of 2009. About 15 million were "active tweeters" [whatever the heck that means]. In short, with social media, "there's no there there."

5. Being "on" social media was not at all to understand how to return value from social media. Among marketers, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were arguably the big social media winners last year. Much has been written about how to participate well and some have reportedly succeeded brilliantly (Google returns 578,000 hits for "twitter success stories" and 37,500 for "facebook success stories"). On the other hand -- despite advice to the contrary -- too many have focused Twitter and Facebook efforts on the number of "followers" or "fans." Likewise, for the majority of LinkedIn users, this venue merely adds up to an "online resume"-- not that there's anything wrong with that (while the term "linkedin success stories" returns just 27,500 Google strikes, search traffic hits related to networking and jobs remains high for LinkedIn, according to Alexa.)

So, yeah. Social Media was the Kool-aid of 2009 and we drank lots of it. In 2010, Marketing Brillo guesses that we'll come to more deeply appreciate this cool beverage, understanding that a) the mix isn't instant, b) the drink leads to more effort than gratification c) as with all disciplines, there truly are few experts d) one swallow won't quench the thirst.

scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Smart Phone Meets GPS, Meets Social Media, Meets Marketing

Last week, I saw a tweet that said, “I'm at Dupont Circle Park (Dupont Cir NW, 19th St NW & P St NW, Washington).” My first thought was, "Who cares?" But, then I figured it was time to learn a thing or two about the mobile GPS frenzy.

Some folks are playing “geo location games” like Urban Defender. Creepy, but not surprising. The serious push, of course, comes from the commercial side. Here’s how that can work.

Less than a month ago, on December 23, Twitter acquired Mixer Labs, the creators of geoAPI. This little smart phone app helps people find their sweet spots and – presumably – spend money.

Certainly, users want the purely informational stuff like GeoAPI’s Reverse Geocoder, which can take a latitudinal/longitudinal coordindate (that's a "lat/lon" to you) and convert it into people-speak (neighborhood, city, state, and country). Good to know. But that's not commercial yet.

GeoAPI also contains “deep data about 16 million businesses and tens of thousands of points of interest” (hours of operation, address, etc.). From there, customers can get seriously involved. Using GeoAPI’s “Entity Creation,” the user can annotate his or her own personal entries. For example, such citations as “awesome sidewalk art” or “best bargains ever,” enable the user to create a virtual world overlay to their own blocks and neighborhoods. Now we're talking customer-intelligence integrated with GPS. There's more.

GeoAPI’s “Media Layers” let the user integrate info from social media sites like Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. This feature lets you check out tweets coming from Central Park in New York, or photos of the Native American Museum in D.C., or what New York insiders think about Magnolia Bakery (Lazy Sunday with 3.7 million YouTube views, proves that people will look).

GPS activity on smart phones will be big business, say experts. Referring to mobile GPS as a "new layer of the web, " Mashable's Pete Cashmore suspects location-sharing devices will be the "breakout services of the year." Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic, Inc., predicted that “Location will be one of the most widespread status update’s on Twitter." Max Gladwell calls geolocation "the trend for 2010," noting that a dozen companies already are in the space.

Can you hear me now?

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Nano is the Real Deal, So Figure Out How To Think Small

David Falato, partner at Jack Nadel International, jacked a lot of folks on LinkedIn’s Marketing Search Group when he announced a USB drive made out of paper that can be inserted into a brochure or even a magazine ad. “It is definitely one of the more unique ideas to come along in the promotional product market in a while. Great for tradeshow handouts, brochures, company catalogs, sweepstakes. magazine ads. We can also gather valuable marketing data, for example we can tell how many people actually plugged the USB drive in and what pages they visited on the website that the webkey directed them to.”

Nano is an extension of the niche and local trends I blogged about earlier. Predictably, this year technology will push nano into new product areas and up its influence on marketing strategies.

In its strict scientific definition, nano is controversial – probably for good reason. But that’s a different nano. In the Marketing Brillo sense, nano means close-up, personal, tailored-to-fit, squeezed comfortably into small spaces, common-denominator savvy, highly pertinent, devoid of the extraneous, and relevant.

In October 2006, the ever-prescient Anne Holland, Marketing Sherpa founder, dubbed the term “nano-niche." Anne’s talking about segementation on steroids. “Divide your marketplace into nano-niches. Only do two or three to start as a test. (I wouldn't test just one because it might be the fluke niche that isn't worth the work. You need to try several to discover what makes a winning niche.” Sound advice that worked well in 2009.

No surprise, nano is happening to our stuff, too. As the world gets more crowded, big products need to get smaller: cars for example. The Renault Twizy and the Tato Nano are ultra-small, ultra-cheap, and eco-friendly.

And then there's Twitter, wee words of marketing, news, opinion, and gossip. And smart phones, the big ALL in a palm shell. And SMS, the sales message without form. Powerful.

What’s on your Little Plate this year?

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Will Vlogging Replace Blogging? Will Actors Replace Writers? Maybe.

Some people would say Blog = info, and Vlog = entertainment. Loïc Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic, doesn't care to split that hair.

On November first, Le Meur posted “30 Predictions for the Future of Twitter.” In the post, he used both blogging and vlogging formats. Check his post for a great predictive wrap-up that shows how written bulleted points can play nicely with longer, more detailed video (19 minutes worth, actually).

One of BusinessWeek’s “25 Most Influential People on the Web,” Le Meur writes, “I am blogging every day a video on loic.tv about (almost) everything I do as I start Seesmic. I also constantly post short thoughts to twitter and often my pictures on Flickr.”

Highlights of Le Mur's view of the future of Twitter include:

• Twitter will still be dominant
 in status updates;
 it's the motherboard to which we plug in.
• Twitter might replace Chat for many people.
• Vertical Twitter apps 
will start to appear; Stocktweets is the first one.
• There will be less and less bullshit 
in public events and in general.

Gotta love that last one. As always, don’t miss the comments.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Early Whys and Wherefores of Twitter Lists

I don’t know where I was the week Twitter “lists” hit the net [October 15-ish] because I’m just getting hip to what is going on. To understand the Twitter List Hooplah, John Haydon's explanation here is as good as any, better than most.

Bottom line: Depending on your purpose, the Twitter “list” scenario mimics your file cabinet, your Rolodex, the snooty books you display on the shelf behind your desk, or a team of research assistants.

The File Cabinet Scenario
In perhaps its most popular use (so far), the Twitter list – which you must create yourself by picking, choosing, and categorizing the people you follow – becomes a sort of digital file cabinet, with your various “who’s who" compartmentalized in separate folders. The purpose of the File Cabinet is to help you keep track of people according to the group/tribe/philosophy/psychosis to which you assign them.

The Rolodex Scenario
The ubiquitous Robert Scoble is trying to keep up with 10,000 people. It used to drive him crazy, but now he has stuff streaming in by groups. The system works so well that, within days of Twitter List release, Scoble says Twitter Lists replaced Google Reader for him. Visit @Scobleizer for a peek at the 40 cognoscentious lists Robert has compiled.

The My List Is Bigger Than Your List Scenario
Like The New York Social Diary -- and depending on who's doing the compiling -- various lists (like those Scoble has put together) can segué to a Very Important List of Very Important People. Todd Zeigler at the Bivings Group thinks Twitter lists will become the bellwether of whom to follow. “I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence. In addition to seeing a Twitter user's follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists. I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.” Heaven help us all.

The Research Team Scenario
Kabir Bedi at PromotionWorld has a good article on how to set up and use Twitter lists. For my purposes, the feature that describes how to use Twitter for “Online Journalism” beckons. “Many news organizations and publishers are using Twitter lists to create staff directories, recommending their favorite Twitter people and specific information. This enables them to use Lists for curated real-time streams and to follow events.” Yeah, baby.

The downside to all this is the certain emergence of Twitter Envy, leading to Twitternoia, culminating in Twitter Syndrome. Watch TMZ for reports on desperate tactics related to getting Twillisted.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Twitter Training Grows Up and Looks Like A Million Bucks

TWTRcon DC09 is happening next Thursday, on October 22. Unfortunately, the registration fee is $595. Not saying the fee is out of whack, just that this event is obviously geared to corporate pocketbooks.

The rest of us can do a hashtag tune-in on Twitter (#TWTCON). The one-day conference at the Grand Hyatt features a line-up of respectable Tweeple like Joe Trippi, Craig Newmark, Laura Fitton, Rohit Bhargava, and Sharon McPherson. I'm expecting some good stuff. If nothing else, the speaker line-up is a great list of people to follow.

Whether or not Marketing Brillo scrubs it, TWTRcon confirms that Twitter is huge business. The question of whether we should get into social media has been closed. We've definitely flipped into doing it right/better.

The stats are there. Hot brand Zappos – acquired by Amazon in July -- takes Twitter very seriously. CEO Tony Hsieh tweets @zappos and has 1.4 million followers. Zappos sponsors Twitter contests and posts an ongoing collection of employee tweets and retweets. Econsultancy blog reports that Dell is using Twitter for loyalty marketing. In late June, Bloomberg reported that Twitter, Inc. was looking at Whole Foods and Starbucks to generate some ad revenue. Maybe that won’t be necessary since Twitter got its $100 million cash infusion last month.

All of which says: It’s time for TWTRCon. Enjoy!

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

p.s. The TWTRCon landing and registration pages are a learning experience. Intriguing third party applications like Cloud Profile abound. Have a look here.

This Guy Tweeted Right And Got More Followers

The central question of much blogging activity is this: “What dynamic strategies drive readership?” An obvious tactic to upping readership is getting your blog in front of a large number of people. But how?

On Wednesday, Kyle Judkins did just that. He devoted an entire blog to Big Blogger and Techno Influencer, Louis Gray. The post made an excellent point about using some Tweeple as canaries in the Tweetmine. Gray graciously -- and truly, he is both a brilliant and a gracious guy -- retweeted Judkins post to his own 13,449 followers. That had to bump up Judkin’s blog readership and build his 2,125 followers.

My guess is that Kyle is looking beyond numbers, to serious followers. This morning his count had bumped to 2,132. At least one of those emanated from the Louis Gray post – mine.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

How Itsy-Bitsy Did Your World Become This Year?

I’m not a sociologist, but if I were, I’m pretty sure the Internet would be my dream come true.

MIT has an amazing display at the MIT Museum called Metropath(ologies). Part of the display is the “Personas,” a system that lets people see how the Internet sees them. When you enter your name in the designated slot, the program develops a multi-colored bar that displays your “aggregated online identity” in a bunch of areas (fame, management, education, movies, news, illegal (say what?), politics, religion, aggression, politics, media professional, medicine, musical, etc.

According to the write-up, Personas is fallible because it isn’t able to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. My color bar for Nancy Rathbun Scott is pretty simple (actually, it’s distressingly simple, but never mind that).

Nancy Scott, on the other hand is infinitely complex (probably because there are millions of Nancy Scotts, including somebody who was executed for murder).

I’m sure the MIT folks are aggregating all the profiles and – should they want to – will be able to take that data and find people with identical profiles (or any other data-mining mix and match that captures the fancy).

And then there’s Twitter! When I contemplate the sociological possibilities of Twitter, I get so worked up that I have to walk around the room. Actually, Twitter is The World of People and there has never been anything remotely like it. (No, Dorothy, Facebook doesn’t count because Facebook connections are predominantly defined and confined by the people we already know. That’s what Facebook was designed to be and that’s what it is.)

I don’t think the people who developed Twitter had -- or do have -- any idea what it would/will be when it's all grown up. Therein lies its magic. It's open-ended and dynamic. Which means that if I want to connect with people all over the world doing brain research, I can do that. Or, if I want to find the 150 people in the world most fascinating to me, I can do that (yes, it would take some time, but the possibility is there).

Where will projects like Personas and Twitter take us? Nobody knows. Never before in human history have people had the ability to connect so broadly and deeply, for so many reasons. Only SciFi can creatively contemplate the implications of our new itsy-bitsy world.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Are Ghost Blogging and Shadow Tweeting Unethical? Don't Make Me Laugh.

Last week, Mark W. Schaefer posted an interesting blog titled “Can You Outsource Authenticity?” Mark has been asked by a number of clients to blog -- and even tweet -- for them. Early commentators to Mark’s post opposed opposed the notion of ghost-blogging, let alone shadow-tweeting. “Don’t. You. Do it.” somebody said. Another person said, “No fakers.”

Marketers need to rethink the 2009 knee-jerk definitions of authenticity swirling around social media.

Copywriters and fundraisers routinely write letters over somebody else's signature. CEOs employ speechwriters, slideshow creators, and PR people. Ghost-blogging is neither special nor different. More to the point, why would any CEO waste energies writing a blog when professional writers can draft for approval?

Shadow-tweeting isn't cut and dried, either. Actors, impersonators, comics, and even spokespersons routinely and successfully "speak" on behalf of others. A whole slew of "stand-ins" have taken to tweeting on behalf of the characters on Man Men and we beg for more.

I see social media maxims about “transparency” and “full disclosure” bending to the reality TV model where "telling all" stands in for honesty and integrity. Let's not get confused. The "Housewives" of New Jersey and Atlanta have impressively demonstrated that transparency itself can lie.

Saying "no" to corporate deception isn't brain surgery. If it smells like deception, it is. That's why, before I blog or tweet for a client, I'm asking myself two questions:

1. Am I thoroughly informed about my client's business?
2. Am I ethically and philosophically comfortable expressing the viewpoint my client wants to communicate?

If the answer is two-times "yes," I'll consider the job. How about you?

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Two More Twitter Courtesies That Tweeple Appreciate

For a great primer on Twitter etiquette, read the Top 10 Rules at Brian Swichkow’s blog. I’d like to add the 11th and 12th rules, both of which have to do with giving credit where credit is due.

11. If You Didn’t Think of It First, Retweet. Case in point: Last week, I retweeted a great post on “Rage” via @Apocalypzia, which contained the famous “mad as hell” rant from the movie Network. The next day, a gal who follows me created her own url and tweet that pointed to the same video. Maybe it was Twitter Coincidence -- after all, that piece of footage with Howard Beale is famous -- but, if not, @Apocalypzia deserved a mention.

12. Don’t Use Somebody Else’s Words and Tweet Them As Your Own. One person I used to follow appears to write brilliant tweets, until you realize that she uses the title of the article she's linking to, plus however many words from the first paragraph will fit in 140 characters -- and that’s her tweet. The original sources -- most of whom are the well known bloggers who actually wrote the brilliant words -- deserve credit in her tweets. The rest of us deserve full disclosure so we don't waste time going to a site we've probably already visited.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Twitter: Good Work for Comics, Rappers, Copywriters

I caught an article on Taco Bell's move to social media in Advertising Age last week. What I loved was the comment left by Rodney33 from Frisco, Texas. Remember Kogi, of Korean Taco Truck fame in L.A.? Well, Rodney invited readers to check out and compare Kogi's hip website, twitter, flickr, and Facebook presence vs. Taco Bell's (which, Rodney says, now has its own "Taco Truck."

Go to the AdAge article for Rodney's full posting. What struck me was the difference in tone between Kogi's casual tweets and Taco Bell whistling in the wind. It's tough to put your teeth into, but Kogi just has more energy, more enthusiasm, more color, more devil-may-care, more humor. Examples:

KOGI:
• Come get ur grub CV!
• La Crescenta closing in 15 min!
• Sorry 4 late updates. TECHNOLOGICAL DISASTER!!!!
• Darth Vader's Psychic HotLine - MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU: http://bit.ly/zebBi

And then there's TACO BELL:
• Thanks everyone for the fun with #tacobellmovies today. Winners announced tmrw ... 1 more from us: Guess Who's Coming to Fourthmeal?
• Taco Bell supports programs that inspire teens to graduate from high school and become caring, educated, pro-active adults.
• Taco Bell for Life

The tweets aren't flowing, TB. they're just too.. well, corporate. Why not take a chance and hire one of those improv guys in L.A. to tweet for you? Or hire a consultant from Kogi. I love your food, but -- Twitter-wise -- you just don't get it.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Twitter’s Trash-or-Trust Treatment Goes to the Movies

Buzz has always driven film success and Twitter has put buzz on steroids. Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, for example “tanked” from the “Twitter Effect,” becoming what Time magazine called “a One-Day Wonder.” [see opinion commentary below]

Word-of-mouth now flies at warp speed and the worst thing film studios can do is oversell a movie in hopes to rake in first-weekend money. It just doesn't work. Todd Phillips, director of Hangover (the top-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, according to Warner Bros.) told The Canadian Press that, “In the old days, it used to be the water cooler effect… Now people get on their thing Friday night when they leave [the theater] and talk to 8,000 people.”

Films may be particularly susceptible to the Twitter Effect because they release widely and simultaneously, but any new product release can falter from Twitter’s trash-or-trust treatment. Keeping expectations in line with reality is key. Jeff Otto, blogging about Hangover at MovieSet notes that, “For all the great bits they gave away in the endless WB marketing campaign leading up to this week’s release, there’s still loads of great material they managed to hide from audiences. See this one before your idiot coworkers ruin it for you at the water cooler..”

Too late for that, Jeff. They already tweeted.. and the tweet was good.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

IMHO, Sacha Baron Cohen's work is an intellectual tour de force. Above all others, Cohen takes a thorough, courageous, unflinching look at our lowest human preconceptions, preoccupations, and misconceptions. Borat was for the xenophobic and Bruno is for the homophobic. And -- even when it's distasteful and hideous to watch, which it often is -- Cohen's work is art, definitely art.

Cleaning Up the Twitter Auto-Follow Mess

This morning, Mark Shaw had 16,092 followers on Twitter. Mark got there by "auto-following" (the Twitter practice of following back anybody who follows you). Mark has learned his lesson -- “You end up basically clogging up your stream with all this nonsense.” On his Phlog, Mark describes how he cleaned up the mess.

If you’ve already screwed up the auto-follow choice like Mark said he did, you can still get clean, but it's going to take some time. Twittori will help you remove people who haven’t tweeted for a period of time and Friendorfollow will identify people who aren’t following you back.

But how do you get rid of people who simply aren’t adding value? There’s no software to do it, so you have to do it manually. “It’s very time consuming, which is why I wish I hadn’t done auto follow in the first place,” Mark laments. But the process is worth it. Here are some determinants Mark uses to gauge follow or not follow:

• Am I interested in what the person is tweeting about? No? Go!
• Does the person display a website or a url? No? Go!
• Are the updates spam or RSS generated? Yes? Go!

Even after the culling (which Mark says consumes about 15 minutes of his day), you may still be left with a lot of people. If so, set up a group on Tweetdeck that separates the tweeple you don’t want to miss.

Now you’re in business.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Are You ALSO Drifting Through Twitter, My Friends?

Digital Drifting – that’s what D. calls a few hours with Twitter. He's right. My mind boggles and I get seasick, as I float atop TweetDeck, riding the Black Sea of undulating screen refreshes.

I’m drowning!!

In only one day – yesterday -- I missed my meet-up at hub pages, skipped #assnchat again, failed to sign into my signed-up for Webinar, and even was reminded that I’d forgotten Slideshare exists! That was in the morning ..

My afternoon nosedived when I found out about Geoff Livingston’s anti-fan page. My God, woman! Geoff posted his anti-fan page in March! I’m hopelessly behind and Twitter demonstrates it to me every moment I'm on watch, scanning the horizon from my TweetDeck.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. I've been judicious (even snooty) about who I follow. I’ve even created a special group of “hot bloggers” (now narrowed to just two big names, plus friends who get hurt faces if I miss their tweets). Side note: You non-VIPs are more interesting than the Big Tweets who lunch daily with OIP (other important people).

Why do I keep shoveling the TwitS***? Because, for one thing, I am plagued with a curiosity that knows no bounds, that scrambles out of control, that runs amok when I go on Deck. And, second, I refuse to let go of this experiment to see how long a formerly sane person can tread Twitter.

Throw me a lifeline, would ya?

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

Take Twittorati for a Test Drive. You'll Buy It.

Thanks to a nudge from Ron Callari, I tested out Twittorati over the weekend. It’s a new search service that can retrieve real-time Twitter postings from Technorati’s Top 100 bloggers (more bloggers will be added to the search function later.)

I’d been messing around with Facebook Business Pages all morning and was very frustrated, so I thought I’d TwitSearch “Facebook” to see what the Twittorati were experiencing. After just one use, Twittorati earned its place in my search repertoire.

Chris Brogan tweeted that he'd set up his own Facebook Business Page improperly, and was paying the price (Chris! I feel your pain!) Michael Arrington at TechCrunch said, "One thing I’ll grudgingly grant to MySpace - the site works. That’s more than I can say for Facebook over the last month or so." Memo to Me: Maybe I'm not an idiot after all.

Twittering along, I stumbled into the murky waters of "who owns what?" TechDirt discussed Power.com's lawsuit to prevent Facebook from blocking outside access to its (our?) very proprietary data locked on 40,000 servers. The controvery was covered in Mashable, too. Memo to Me: Think (again) about who owns what and blog later.

SearchEngine Land noted that “fan pages” are constructed in such a way that it's actually possible for a Facebook fan page to Google-up before a company's official website. Memo to Me: What's a "website" anyway? Discuss FB Business Page option with clients.

During a TechCrunch-up, Chris Cox said Facebook is "testing a bunch of versions of the home page .. balancing the aggregated view with the real-time view .. creating a model for what we want to know about our friends." Memo to Me: He's from Facebook and he's here to help me. Why do I feel so queasy?

Meanwhile, Mashable reports that, in 2009, MySpace revenues are projected to be more than twice those of Facebook. Memo to Me: The jury's been instructed, but it's still out. Take a deep breath and Tweet again in the morning.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo

My Twit Snit re the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Twitter

There's good Twitter and bad Twitter. And then there's b-UGLY Twitter.

My Good Twitter (GT) daily performs two miracles that no other process can. First, GT keeps me in close touch with the current work of my "top tier," the thinkers, doers, and influencers I respect across a variety of industries. Second, GT is the only way for me to regularly connect with my "lite tier," the many everyday folks doing the same things I am. I want to know what you're working on, what interests you, what resources you have found valuable and passed along (thank you!).

The Bad Twitter is naughty, indeed. Too often, my Tweet box overflows with hasty ReTweets -- send alongs of news that's already out there, everywhere (not Michael Jackson or Steve McNair R.I.P... that's a whole *other* story. I'm talking about those hasty ReTweets of stuff that's all over the wire, and all over the Net). Second -- and regrettably -- from some in the "top tier," I also must bear a certain number of Tweets about which no one cares a whit. (I know you're famous and I know you're special, but I *still* don't care what you had for lunch or whether you're going to bed now. Why must you charge me the painful price of your Daily Stuff so that I might get to the nuggets of your genius when it's finally ready for public consumption? Alas, this is such a high price that I may be forced to "unfollow you," which I will do with deep regret). p.s. God bless you Seth Godin for the thoughtful genius of your "@NotGodinREPOSTS." So simple. So focused. So useful!

And then there's the "ugly" -- the JUNK Twits, the murky bottom feeders who hope to get rich quick or sell me something. You know who you are and you savage my valuable time by forcing me to figure out you're a Nut Twit. I never want to see your b-ugly face again. B-ugly, be gone.

What's your Twit Snit, my friends? Do tell...

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo